Target targets hungry smartphone users and the Super Bowl

On Feb. 3, the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers will battle for NFL supremacy in New Orleans at Super Bowl XLVII. To celebrate the big game, Target Corp. has launched a game on its mobile commercesite and apps designed to entertain customers and promote select snack food brand partners.

The game is called the Snack Bowl. It is set in an animated living room complete with furniture and TV. At the bottom of the screen, snack foods including DiGiorno pizza, M&Ms, Ore-Ida fries, Reese’s, Ritz crackers, Stride iD Peppermint gum and Coca-Cola Zero sit on a table. As animated characters run through the living room, the player must use his finger to swipe the snack food so that it hurtles across the room into an animated character’s mouth. Players are awarded points for each successful throw and can achieve different status levels based on total points. Players also can share their game status on Facebook.

“Snack Bowl is a fun, new way for Target to engage with our mobile guests as they think about planning a great game-day party,” says Phil McKoy, vice president of Target.com. Target is No. 34 in the Internet Retailer Mobile 400.

Target views the digital channel as more than shopping online—it’s an opportunity to connect with customers, a Target spokesman says.

“The Snack Bowl game is an example of how Target uses our digital offerings to entertain and inspire our guests in a uniquely Target way,” he says. “Snack Bowl is a great opportunity to entertain our mobile guests while also raising awareness around Target’s offerings that will help our guests host a great game-day party. We are experimenting with new and novel ways to engage our guests through digital and mobile and Snack Bowl is part of that. We expect to learn from our guests’ responses and will use that data to refine and improve our digital marketing strategies.”

Snack Bowl will appear on the home page of Target’s mobile site on compatible touchscreen devices until Feb. 9. The Target app, which also features the game, can be downloaded for free in Apple Inc.’s App Store or Google Inc.’s Google Play app store for Android.